Orglines Blog

“Dotted Line” reporting — the practice of representing multiple reporting as additional accountabilities for a single position with a dotted line on an org chart — is a bad idea. Here’s why:

Not that multiple reporting is bad. Multiple reporting — being accountable to different people for different aspects of our jobs — is an inescapable fact of life in modern organizations. What is bad is failing to identify which responsibilities go with which reporting relationships.

A better practice is to define two positions, one each each reporting relationship, and add details to specify which aspects of your job are overseen by which supervisor.

For example, suppose you work in a project-oriented company where at any given time you might be assigned to several different projects, as in addition to reporting to a line manager. Let’s say you are assigned to Project X. You would have two Orglines positions: one reporting to your line manager, and another reporting to the project manager.

Taking the time to specify each position and relationship separately may help you clarify your own understanding of the multiple roles you fulfill at work, as well as uncovering ambiguities and possible conflicts that can lead to frustration and disappointing results.

In contrast, when we use dotted lines, the ambiguities and possible conflicts are not only allowed to persist, but are actually entrenched!

So, avoid dotted lines at all cost. Instead, define your orglines, and get more stuff done.